When T was young, maybe 5, and into princesses, she wanted her bedroom painted close to the colour of this pink dress she is wearing. I did -everything- to talk her out of it. I thought the colour was… well…a LOT, and maybe she didn’t really understand how overwhelming it would be once her entire room was coloured in it. Maybe a less intense pink would be better? But nope, the girl knew what she wanted, and she loved it for years, even though the second you stepped into the room, you too were the same colour of pink. She loved it until the next phase of childhood when it was no longer princesses but maybe beads and play acting when she wanted blue and then teen T went for an elegant deep grey that she painted herself. But she’s always been someone with a certain amount of intensity that translated into an energy and a drive that’s driven her success in school and propelled her toward the many jobs she’s taken on. It will serve her well even if she can’t quite see it herself yet.
There are moments when time for a mom crawls, like during 500 look-at-me cartwheels. Or when the only moment of respite from having to manage, cajole, and juggle everything was the simple battle of rush hour traffic to or from work; or the five minutes locked in the bathroom with the kids shouting and pounding on the door outside. 
But there were those other moments, princess moments, moments in the audience at school to see her get some award of the month or play some instrument in band or act in some play, the tickles and squeals, the excitement of picking out a toy or a craft I knew she’d love and the imagination and intensity of love she poured out.
And then poof, just like that, you realized they’ve changed and it happens so slowly or maybe it was so quickly that you didn’t quite see it; you wouldn’t catch them dead in hot pink. And there is the unsettling realization some things are gone for good.
In its place there are more exciting things and maybe that’s why you didn’t notice the change at first; you catch yourself having mature deep conversations about life with them and they make you think something that was not your thought, your relationship evolves to something you appreciate at a deeper level, they make you genuinely laugh with their stories and you both realize you are more similar than you thought and that’s half the problem, and you catch glimmers of the people they’re going to become that is all purely them and who they are and really nothing about you.
But it can’t be helped. You’re left wondering where the time went, and you think about that princess time, and the chubby little legs and sticky-finger hugs, the endless cartwheels or whatever the equivalent is for you, and I’m left feeling sometimes that I somehow didn’t hold on tight enough to slow it down, I had so much life to scrap with, and I’m annoyed that if I had to go through it again, it would probably be exactly the same because, dammit, that’s the way we are.
Regrets, nostalgia and pride get twisted up into a sort of happy-sad thing we can’t put words to very well. I wish for the millionth time that their dad had been here through it, now to share the adult version of these memories with me, remind each other we did our best, laugh and growl at this or that aggravation. The lonely burden of being responsible for the memories and having no one to appreciate them as I do weighs heavy at times in moments of private. And for the millionth time, too, the follow-up thought it was never meant to be, or it would have been. For whatever reason these are the lives picked out for us. If we could have done something different we would have. I had something to learn. I hoped I learned it.
T finished her exams last week – high school is history. She will officially graduate next week. But between the exams and the graduation, it’s the prom with all it’s glory and drama.
Morgan didn’t get to go through this whole prom thing because of Covid, so it was fun to go dress shopping (when we didn’t get on each other’s nerves). I felt like I was a Mom, going through a Mom rite of passage and though I loved the yellow, and the blue was pretty nice, when she settled on this one, I think we both thought it was perfect.
I believe T picked the colour of her dress in part because she thought no one would have expected her to and it was not going to be like anyone else’s. We might have made a joke about her younger self loving it. And she might have even said she felt like a princess in it. But that was then and this is now.
I will admit after seeing the dress hanging in the living room over a period of several days, I really did have to move it upstairs, because apparently a lot of pink is still too much pink for me, and I didn’t want seeing her in it on the evening to lose any of the effect I knew it would have.
I’m glad I did. I see T’s beautiful grown-up self in that elegant pink dress, vibrantly shining, ready to take on the next exciting phase of her life, and this evening, it’s her, and it’s perfect.
And to me, her mom, who was there day in and day out throughout it all, I can’t help but feel seeing the grownup version of her younger self, that there’s something that has come full circle. If only just for now.